Ramblings about marching band
by Divergent Narnian Timelord
Summary: Basically me telling my story about What my band career has been so far, funny moments, bittersweet moments, and all of those things.
1. Chapter 1

**Ramblings about marching band**

**Freshman year, part 1**

I was as nervous as crap the day I walked into the band room for my first day of band camp, So nervous that I actually asked my dad to walk in with me.

When I walked in the head drum major was waiting with nametags and bags of candy for all the freshmen, "your Catherine right?" I nodded. "You look exactly like your sister."

My sister had also been in band, she graduated two years ago, so several people in band this year knew her.

I was then led over two an area of the band room and introduced two the assistant band director who also happened to be the instructor for the pit. He asked me if I had any percussion experience and I answered honestly, "Not really, I took a few lessons about a year and a half ago but I had no way of practicing, I do know most of the basics though".

My lack of experience was the main thing I was nervous about.

"that's just fine, anything you need to know we will teach you, Do you play any other instruments?" That, I could reply confidently to. " Yes, I'm a trombone player."

"Great! We've had people before who weren't even musicians; they just decided to be in band."

All the sudden my nervousness went away and I felt like I was ready for anything.

The first two days of camp where a Thursday and Friday and it was all freshmen, with the exception of a few upperclassmen who had volunteered to help out.

The weekend went by very slowly, I didn't like having to wait for it to be over, I couldn't wait for next week.

Turns out, Band camp wasn't everything I thought it would be. The first two days where just to get everyone settled in and to figure out for certain how many people would be in that year (there's always that jerk that signs the commitment form and everything and then never shows up).

I don't know if it is the same way at your school, But at mine the pit has to learn to march just like everybody else, even if there are no parades scheduled for that year, or anything that would require us to march for that matter. So we were out there in the blazing Kentucky heat (and believe me, It gets hot as heck here in the summer.)

At first I saw this as completely pointless, Why learn to march If where never going to use it? I understand now it's mostly for the discipline.

But I also noticed effects that had nothing to do with discipline at all. You see, I have cerebral palsy, and all though It's never horribly limited me, I have a stiff right leg. This was the reason why I was in pit and not marching.

After the first week I went to visit my grandmother and she pointed out that I was limping less, I know I had a limp, But I never paid a whole lot of attention to the way that I walk.

But she was right, My limp was almost completely gone.

At the end of the two weeks of band camp we always have a water balloon fight.

So of course it had to be all cloudy and windy and crap. But nonetheless we were not canceling that fight, We would only do that if we started to see lightning.

Despite the chilly weather, the fight was still loads of fun, afterwards, my mom brought over a towel and I dried off the best I could and wrapped the towel around me to act as a jacket and we laughed about the whole thing together.

I went home and changed into dry clothing and my mom drove me over to a gas station where we would be having the other end of band camp event, the car wash fundraiser.

Me and a friend where holding up the sign down by the road and to get attention we yelled and did dances.

Then, Some kids from our rival school drove past and yelled that we were going to lose. We yelled "right back at ya!" and I went home with a sunburn that showed the outline of my flip flops because I had not put sunscreen on my feet when I decided that I didn't want to wear socks to a car wash because They would probably get all wet and gross.

I also went to bed that night knowing the fun was just getting started.


	2. Chapter 2

**Ramblings about marching band**

**Freshman year, part 2**

Practice continued for a while and then we were given a few days break before school stared

back up (good thing too, I'm willing to bet money that most of us only had our summer

assignments half done). The name of our show was reflections by the way, It had been

announced during band camp and I had been unlucky enough to have been in the bathroom

during that time.

Once school starts, practice starts at 3:30 and ends at 6:00, School lets out at 3:15, That gives you 15

minutes to get your butt to the bathroom, change, and get your butt out to the field (or in my case, to

the band room to get warmed up and _then _push the instruments out to the practice field).

Since I don't like jeans because I hate the stiffness of denim, the only exception being jeggings because

they are stretchier, I wear skirts/dresses most of the time. So to speed up the process of changing, I

wore my shorts under the skirt and put a tank top under whatever shirt I was wearing.

(please note that in Kentucky a tank top is sleeveless but has thick straps, the shirts with thin straps are

called cami's here, I've had friends from other states use tank top to refer to both and I don't want to

confuse people if I bring this up later…)

And then once I got home, I had to decide what class I could do my homework for and come up

with excuses for the other classes. I had learned back in 6th grade that teachers didn't accept

band as an excuse, even if the concert runs so late that it's your bedtime when you get home

and your parents won't let you stay up a second longer.

That routine went on for a few weeks and then an important day came, the day of the first

football game. We finished up practice at 5 instead of 6 and then when we went inside we were

given dinner. I think this was the first time I ate my whole dinner and still had room for another

chick fil a sandwich.

When we got to the bleachers I wished I had brought my water with me it was freakin' hot and it

was very humid too. The humidity had made it hard to get my hair into the fishtail braid that

most of the pit girls wore ( with the exception of one of us, whose hair was too short to braid),

and I was already getting flyaway's, I made a note to myself to buy hair gel later, apparently

hairspray alone is not enough for my wild curly mess. Luckily, my mom was nearby and I

convinced her to buy me a bottle of water.

When It started to get towards the end of the second quarter we all left to warm up. I had been

placed on rack and so I did not have to warm up with the mallets. (I did warm up on an extra

marimba during practice, but we don't bring it to games or competitions). So chilled out, my

mom had come over to take pictures, so I gave her lots of hugs, and tried to calm my nerves.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, it was time to go on. I helped to push out my rack and

when we got to the field my mom gave me an encouraging wave (Our band director has her

take pictures out on the field, he thinks this is good practice for when we go to BOA and there

are judges on the field). Then the show started.

Then it was over, and we took our stuff over to a corner where it would be safe and sat down to

be talked to. Our band director said we did a good job, But what really mattered the most was

we think we did.

I would like to say I remember it all very clearly and that I think I did great. But honestly, I don't

remember anything at all.

After talking to some upperclassmen, I discovered that very few of them remembered their first

performance either, I guess the nerves do it to us.

Then It was announced that next week we would be going to our first competition at Louisville

male. We all cheered and looked at each other with the "get ready to kick butt face"

We had a week to prepare and The director was not going to let us waste a second of it.

The next day I was introduced to the horrible bane of existence known as all day practice.

FROM 9 AM TO 5 PM!


	3. Chapter 3

**Ramblings about marching band**

**Year 1 part 3**

If you have all day practices, and you enjoy having band from 9 to 5, then that is great and I hope you are blessed with lots of all day practices, If you don't have them then that's probably a good thing, unless you are the world's most massive band nerd (every band has at least a few of them.)

The main thing I didn't like was the food I ate, my mom wanted me to get lots of protein and because of this, she gave me eggs every morning of band camp, and now gave them to me every morning before all day practice.

I now hate eggs…

With a burning passion…

Seriously, there are no words to describe how much I hate them.

But other than that I also hated the fact that I pretty much passed out as soon as I could get to my bed when I got home.

I had to eat dinner in bed once because I legitimately was too worn out to get up.

Don't give me that "you're in the pit, you don't have to march, you shouldn't be tired" crap. You clearly have never been anywhere in the south in august.

Also, my feet hurt less when I am able to move around, if you're in pit, you can't move around.

I swear my favorite feeling in this world is the feeling I get when I finally sit down after practice.

So yeah, All day practice was bad. Blah blah blah…

Then, finally, _That_ day came.

The day of the first competition.

Yeah, I was pretty darn excited about that day.

After a not so long ride to Louisville that I had made gazillions of times before in the past, we got to Louisville male high school.

It started off pretty awkward, most of us had to go to the bathroom, and the doors to the bathroom stalls where shorter than me. ( and that's saying something, I'm short now and I was about an inch shorter then.)

I really do not like the Idea that someone could look in while I was peeing.

Then after the awkward part was done, the horrifying part began.

And of course, Technology was involved with making the horrifying stuff horrifying.

After a warm up that, just like the warm up for the first football game, felt like eternity, We went onto the field to perform.

I soon learned how different Performances at games and performances at competitions were.

At the games, the people were kind of rude and talked a lot. Here everyone was quite, everyone was paying attention to you.

Less than halfway into the show, and I loved it.

But then It got to the last movement.

No , The show didn't fall apart. But what happened was pretty scary.

That darn technology.

I forgot to mention this earlier, I think, If I did then you're going to hear this again because it's important.

We didn't have a drumline.

Yep you heard me right.

We didn't have enough people that year so instead of a drumline we had two pits, a regular one in the front and a rhythm section in the back, consisting of dtx pads and a synth.

If you would like an example of how this would work, open up another tab, go to youtube, and look at tarpon spring's 2010 show.

In our show there was a part that was supposed to be a long drum feature at the beginning of the last movement, But that wasn't going to work with us. So instead we had the rythem section playing this awesome dubstep melody thing.

Yep. Dubstep.

In the band show.

Be very jealous.

But the thing is, when we got to that part, we realized the speakers had screwed up. We could barely hear what was going on in the back.

**DUN DUN DUN…**Anyways, sorry I haven't been updating, I've had school and crap.


	4. Chapter 4

**I am so sorry about the lack of updates, but life, and band had gotten in the way, do keep expecting updates, just expect them to be at random intervals.**

Somehow, we managed to get through the performance, not fall apart, and sound good as well, After the performance, we were taken into the school's gymnasium. There we learned that the audience had been able to hear the dubstep, but somehow the speakers that allowed us to hear it had broke. We were congratulated on the performance, and watched a video that had been made, all of my worries went away in an instant. We watched the awards ceremony for prelims, we made finals, and got best colorguard, and best overall effect.

We then went outside to eat lunch. Normally we would go to another school and practice, but unfortunately we had drew an early performance time for finals, so we would not have time to do that. So we hanged out inside the buses to relax some. After a while I got tired of sitting on the bus, and decided to go back outside to sit under the trees, and walk around to stretch out my legs some.

While trying to get off the bus, one of our trumpet players said something rather memorable. "everyone move, she's trying to get off of the crazy train."

Ever since then, I have called the band bus the crazy train in my mind.

Then came finals, after getting my first competition performance out of the way, I was a lot less nervous. But sadly, I still got nervous enough that I really had to pee, and ended up running to the bathroom as soon as all the pit instruments were where they were supposed to be.

I don't really remember the performance itself, but it must have been good, because we ended up winning the grand championship and several of the caption awards. It may have been just an extremely small local competition but I was still very proud of myself.

That night I got to do my first encore performance.

After our encore, parents came down on to the field to congratulate us and to take pictures. The first thing I did when I saw mine was run over and give them a hug.

My dad called me champ for the rest of the week.

But we had a lot of work to do, the next weekend, we would be going to BOA regional's.

**Sorry for the long wait guys, I will try to update whenever possible, there's a reason why I write a lot of oneshots, and this is it. Also, this may not be entirely accurate, this first part was two years ago after all, so if there are any inconsistency's, it's probably because I'm just putting together bits that I remember. **


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